I forgot to intersperse the chapters of my concurrently running fic sidestory. The next side chapter will be integrated again.
Ashura: Demigod synonymous with demon.
Burning blood.
Clouded moon.
A smile that encircles all and invites fate.
16th Century Japan, Warring States Period
Prologue: Ashura
It was an acrid smell. Not in its singular qualities, for it was too strong to allow any judgments about it. It overpowered his senses, closed in on all sides. In the darkness, he could feel it crawling along his armor, like a second skin, loose and deadened to feeling; and as the atmosphere reached the true, exposed skin at the base of his neck, it was a rough, unpleasant situation. Not even his tightly bound haramaki, with its rigid metal plates and silk rope, could constrict his chest more than the oppressive stench, filling and corrupting his lungs with every breath. Deep, tropical heat drew forth beads of sweat upon his creased brow, and his hindered breath struggled to emerge from behind his face-mask, a plate of steel frozen in a bestial grimace.
The smell came from below. That’s why it could creep up his body so. He knew the thing he followed was near, and in the darkened room, lit only by a few, sparse candles, he felt its desire. Every shadow let out imaginary lunges of murderous intent.
But that sense was unnecessary. It had left behind a trail of its work.
His sandaled feet soaked themselves in what could have been a pool of shallow water. But the thickness and consistency of it clung fast to him, and even with a strong heart, he dared not look down. Invisible, robust things, some soft, some metal, brushed against every step. At times he felt himself stopping, steeled but somehow frantic eyes searching every corner of the un-navigable blackness. The grip he held on his katana was stone-like, but not out of bravery. Shame and bravery had ceased to exist when he’d entered the keep. That low ceiling, and the heavy oak pillars boxed him in, leaving him nothing but shadows and the things upon the floor he refused to look at. His feet were entirely saturated in it in by now, and they dragged. He could no longer hear his steps on the formerly slick, almost lacquered cherry wood floor.
The sound of ragged breathing ahead had crept up on him even from directly before his face. Something was there in the darkness, and the candle posts had petered off. Its voice was hideous, and each gulp, a wet hiss of drawn air, filled him with revulsion. He had to cut, dispatch the thing right away. It wasn’t any longer because he knew that thing had cut down every one of his allies. They were samurai, and prepared for death. No matter how torturous. It was simply that his mind would not accept the existence of a living, breathing, avatar of abject terror standing before him, back turned. Its fear had to be appeased, and only one sacrifice would do.
A blade, that of a nodachi, but perhaps his own height, held in one dark hand, laying disrespectfully tip against the floor. The curved point was embedded in the red floor, perfectly still.
The armor was a dark, impure crimson-no, dyed in crimson. Heat emanated from every orifice of the shadow-covered shape that his eyes could only barely comprehend. With every gasp of air, its heaving shoulders filled the silent mortuary with pure dread, and sucked from him the strength in his chest and proud arms.
Only fear remained behind.
He felt it move before it even turned to face him. It was because his eyes picked up on the ripple in the “floor” the sword point buried itself in. Long, pure, circular ripples that traveled across murky shapes to brush against his warm feet.
The helm upon the hunched shoulders of the enemy warrior twisted to face its enemy. It faced his frozen, metal yell of anger with an identical one, but that mouth carried within it two thick swords no human jaw could have supported. It was enough for the samurai to imagine that mask was his enemy’s actual face. The red armor’s back was studded with quills like that of a porcupine; until the samurai strained his eyes and saw that they were arrows buried deep within, saturated with blowfish poison. Yet still the beast stood there with its feet invisible, and rusted, bloody sword bare.
But behind that mask were eyes that even in the darkness, he could somehow perceive. Cold, perfectly round, and brimming with a dim light. The face they were set deep in was stiff with the rigor of fury, tensing and pulling with each breath. Within those eyes he recalled the stories of dark times before the daimyo, and before their retainers. Of an age of blood and consumed flesh. A place in their country where human men dared not set foot, for only there in the world would they be eaten. Man, who fed upon the flesh of lesser beings, would be food for devils that should not have ever emerged from Naraku. Those tales were the domain of children not men, but even so, the recollection surfaced unwelcome inside his mind.
It raised a thick, tree-trunk like arm and began its approach. The sounds of its breath strengthened, cutting through his ears and limbs, making him week. The extremities of his body became useless, like they had suddenly fled far from him and the frantic commands of his mind to face his enemy, to raise his katana into a defensive posture. It seemed as though the legs beneath him wilted and crumpled like trampled flowers. He fell to his knees in a sanguine splash. The barely recognizable pieces of meat resting below him violated his vision without mercy. His fingers finally crumbled away from the grip of his blade, the hilt dipped in the fast-sticking dye, to join with those beneath them. Incomplete, and cold. No response but the trace heat of life bleeding away, slowly.
There was nothing more left to him but to be scattered amongst those below, in the blackened hallway of butchers.